The meeting started off with Bill showing us his latest computer related finds. One was a Zip drive that connected to a television for viewing. Hadn’t seen a Zip drive in a decade.

For a while, there were four simultaneous conversations or things happening at the same time. I will give as much as I can for the happenings at the meetings.

There was a discussion about photography. Warren said he has joined a group that provides support for his photography. There was a discussion about the advantages of the phone based cameras versus hand held digital cameras. The DSLR has much more versatility with the interchangeable lenses, f stop, and exposure time controls. But, the phone based cameras are more convenient to carry. Daniel reminded the group that best camera is the one you have when you go to take the picture.

Jane’s computer had multiple kernel panics on start up. Daniel looked at it and when he tried to reset the PRAM and the SMC, no difference occurred. Jane had a Time Machine backup and Daniel was able to boot in the recovery mode. He then tried a reinstall of the operating system and when it called for it, he used the backup to transfer her old apps and files to her computer. She rebooted just before the meeting broke completely and she was able to access her computer. I was later informed she was in her computer and she deemed it successful. (She provided a report, which is attached to this month’s minutes)

Kathy brought a SSD and 8 GB of RAM for 15” MacBook Pro. However, no one had brought all the tools for the changeover. Kathy went to get the needed tools and the transfer from her hard drive to the SSD started. However, not all the data was able to be moved by the end of the meeting, so I took it home to complete.the job.

Midge’s old 15” MacBook Pro has a bulging battery. The computer would start after resetting the SMC, but would only run for a minute or so. There was only one slave cable available, so her computer went to the house for copying.

There was a quick discussion about macOS updates. The full installer for High Sierra is available only if you are running macOS 10.11.x El Capitan or macOS 10.12.x Sierra. If you are running an older system, a stub installer will be downloaded, which will download and install the rest of the installer. (On macOS from 10.7.x to 10.10.x) If you have purchased the full installers from the App Store, you can download it using the Purchases selection in the App Store, in you account.

You have probably heard about the Spectre and Meltdown flaws in the Intel, AMD, and ARM processor equipped devices. The Macintosh computer, iPhones, iPads, and iPods are all effected. Apple addressed the flaws with Apple 10.13.2 (High Sierra) Supplemental update on the Macs and with Safari 11.0.2 on OSX El Capitan 10.11 and OSX Sierra 10.12. iOS devices were addressed with the iOS 11.2.2 update.

The next NVMUG meeting is on February 17, 2018 at 10:00 am in the Northeast Regional Hospital in room 224.